DESCRIPTION (Applicant's Description Verbatim): The goal of this Phase I SBIR proposal is to 10,000- 20,000 people die each year as a result of DCM in the USA. Currently, there is no cure for DCM, and treatment is largely directed at symptom management. Therefore, the need for a thorough understanding of the early changes and underlying causes of DCM is great. The identified genes will be used as candidate drug targets and/or possible diagnostic markers. To identify-differentially expressed genes, we are taking advantage of a well-characterized avian animal model of DCM. This animal model has been shown to correlate with human DCM in all key aspects tested so far. Our method of choice is a new differential screen that combines suppression subtractive hybridization with a high throughput differential screen. This method basically eliminates the isolation of false positives and results in a thousand fold enrichment of differentially expressed sequences in a single hybridization experiment. The SBIR phase II proposal is directed at target validation in myocardium from patients undergoing cardiac transplantation for DCM, and development of the commercial aspects of this project. PROPOSED COMMERCIAL APPLICATION: Several commercial projects will result from the research of this SBIR proposal. First the differentially expressed genes will be marketed to pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies as candidate drug targets and possible diagnostic markets. We will market the avian Fz-DCM animal for the study of cardioprotective effects of potential therapeutic drugs. Tests in the form of DNA arrays or PCR based kits may be developed.